ISS Institute Publications

Reports from International Specialised Skills Institute Fellows

Angela Tsimiklis

An ISS Institute Fellowship sponsored bySponsored By Higher Education and Skills Group, Department of Education and Training, Victorian Government

The Fellow is now in a position to link Australian Industry stakeholders with various Governments and academics that have an international reputation and vision for the continued development of Artisan Gelato skills. The Fellow’s understanding of Artisan Gelato has been significantly enhanced through undertaking the expert training, practical workplace development and exposure to the unique historical, culinary and cultural influences of Italy.

The purpose of this field of study was to examine best practice in trade training in similar overseas markets, in particular the Red Seal and Journeyman’s Certificates that exist in the USA and Canada where the building industry is a much larger yet comparable entity to Australia’s building industry.

Lindee Conway

Department of Education and Training Victorian Government FellowshipAn ISS Institute Fellowship sponsored by The Higher Education and Skills Group

It has been acknowledged on both sides of the Tasman that less than optimal English-language, literacy and numeracy skills are linked to long term unemployment, disadvantage, poorer health outcomes and lower productivity. Evidence for this is to be found in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development’s (OECD’s) Survey of Adult Skills, which compares both countries, as well as other participating nations.

As an outcome of participation in the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in 2011-2012, both Australia and New Zealand produced strategies and policies to ameliorate the issues identified for their respective populations, and to activate change in adult education assessment, teaching and learning.

Emma Watson

Department of Education and Training Victorian Government FellowshipAn ISS Institute Fellowship sponsored by The Higher Education and Skills Group

This Fellowship has allowed the Fellow, Emma Watson, to undertake a study tour of two San Francisco based adult education facilities and attend two eLearning conferences in the USA, to better understand how learning platforms and learning tools are selected to encourage both teaching staff and students to engage fully in blended learning.

Think of the community area as the new 'town square' or office 'water cooler'.

DEFINITION

Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.

The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features:

User-generated content, such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.

Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.

Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

[Courtesy of Wikipedia.]

The Community area is for free ranging discussion, a place to meet people and share ideas.

Don't forget to leave comments or like posts by other users.

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FORUMS

Think of the forum area as the formal discussion area, you may also request help here in the technical forum.

DEFINITION

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.

They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.

Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; example: a single conversation is called a "thread", or topic.

A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish.

The news area is for broadcasting general interest articles to the whole community.

DEFINITION

A blog (a truncation of the expression "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries ("posts").

Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic.

In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and sometimes professionally edited.